Read Julia London for Free Online Page A

emphatically and
instantly dropped her gaze to the table, working to wipe the grin off her
face.
    “Look at me,” Parker demanded.
    Kelly refused to look up but rubbed
the back of her neck and wished the naked Parker would take a hike. Her face was flooding
with heat.
    “ Oh . Okay. I get it,” he said with a sigh.
    “What?” she
asked, looking up, and saw the knowing smirk. “No, no, there is no oh ,” she
protested, perhaps a tad too emphatically.
    “Right.” He was grinning at her. A
naked Parker Price was grinning at her.
    She snorted and looked around for
the waitress. “So how hard can it be to unwrap some premade chicken Caesars and bring them
over?
    “Hey, don’t freak out, Kelly. I will admit that I pictured you the same
way.”
    That certainly got her attention—she jerked a wide-eyed gaze at him.
“ Excuse me?”
    He threw up a hand. “Just keeping it real, here.”
    “Well . . . keep
it real someplace else,” she suggested, gesturing vaguely toward someplace
else.
    He laughed. “Didn’t have you pegged for a prude.” His gaze flicked the
length of her. “Quite the opposite.”
    “I am not a prude,” she insisted. “Just because I
don’t appreciate a man I’ve just met picturing me like that does not make me a
prude.”
    “You’re right. It doesn’t make you a prude; it makes you
uptight.”
    “Thanks a lot.”
    He grinned. “You’re welcome.”
    He was teasing her. Okay. She sat
back, crossed one leg over the other, and started swinging her foot. “So now that you have
enlightened me that you are a whole person, and not just a jock who pictures women he’s
just met naked, maybe you will tell me the real reason you are playing so
poorly.”
    That made Parker groan and roll his eyes to the ceiling. “May I ask a
question for once?”
    “Ask away.”
    “Why did you choose me to
hate?”
    She didn’t hate Parker. She actually kind of liked him in a weird,
distant kind of way. “I don’t hate you,” she scoffed, flicking her wrist at him as if that
was a completely ludicrous suggestion.
    “Yes, you do. You trash-talk me
every day. You don’t seem to have a program if you’re not Parker-bashing. And I would like
to know how it ever got to that point.”
    “Well, first of all, I trash lots of
sports stars on my show—Wait. That didn’t come out right. What I mean is that I have
sports talk show. I have to talk about the good and the bad to be legitimate, and you just
happen to be spectacularly bad at the moment. But hey, if you started hitting and fielding
and living up to that truckload of dough they paid you, I’d talk about how great you
are.”
    He suddenly leaned forward, put his arms on the table, and looked at her
with an intensity that made her suck in her breath a little. “So if I play well, you’ll
ease up on me?”
    “Absolutely!”
    His eyes narrowed. “Let’s put a little wager on it. We’re
playing the Astros at home tomorrow. If I get a base hit, you ease up a little. If I get
an RBI, you not only ease up, you talk me up. And if I get a home run, you
go out with me.”
    Kelly almost spewed her water all over the table and then laughed out loud.
“Are you nuts? I’m not going out with you!”
    “What’s the matter? Afraid I’ll get
a home run?”
    “You are so not going to hit a home run.”
    “Says
who?’
    “Says me. You haven’t had a decent turn at bat in a
month!”
    “Then what’s the problem? Take the bet.” His gaze challenged her, daring her
to do it.
    Kelly drummed the table with her fingers while considering it. First of all,
he’d never get a homer, at least not now, not batting like he was. And second of all, it
wouldn’t be the end of the worldif he did, because he really was
cute—and likable in a sort of full-of-himself jockish way. And third . . . She suddenly
leaned forward. “Okay, how about this? Deal on the base hit. Deal on the RBI. But if you
don’t get a hit or an RBI or, let’s be real, a home run , then